That reply was excellent, especially the spirit of collegiality that Love is which I sensed IN it! Plus the pictures and illustrations and all! I love all of that!:)
I commend you!:)

So I wd like to encourage to do the same again and at all times whether any question or comment is SIGNED ape or leakey or gould or darwin or dawkins or etc! Doing the same when YOUR OWN AUTHORITIES are quoted, mined or not, --but especially when mined! --- enhances your standing with me myself and I am sure with others! That way you set the example to other evolutionists as to how --IN & WITH LOVE AND RESPECT--to handle questions posed in the name of EVOLUTIONARY AUTHORITIES --ESPECIALLY SINCE YOU SAY THAT YOU STILL FIND HOW THEY AGREE WITH YOU----just as I am setting the example to creationists and IDs ---notice ATHENA's response and she may not even be a ider nor creationist! --- as to how --IN & WITH LOVE AND RESPECT---to handle any responses like quote-mining and etc--- and how I, who am always talking about LOVE, wd love to get questions and quotes, even A question or A quote, from ANYONE quoting MY AUTHORITY & -TIES, especially from any atheist or evolutionist, as to why and how MY OWN AUTHORITY says and cd say that he loves Jacob and hates Esau or that there are 6 things he hates, or how come David, the man after his own heart says that he hates his enemies with perfect Hatred! Hint!

Ok?

Now on to the 2ndary subject overall, but to the primary subject of this thread underall!:)

Alun wrote:
Good question. I actually left most of the evidence for this argument out, as I had anticipated debate with ID advocates, not creationists. I have as of now added more information in the way of proof to this premise.

Thanx!

Alun wrote:
In fact the best way of dating fossils and geological strata is a technique called radioisotope dating.

Thanx for all those details.
So how do you answer this guy? What's he missing?

"Eleven human skeletons, the earliest known human remains in the Western hemisphere, have recently been dated by this new accelerator mass spectrometer technique. All eleven were dated at about 5,000 radiocarbon years or less! If more of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man are tested and are also found to contain carbon-14, a major scientific revolution will occur and thousands of textbooks will become obsolete."
Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989).
bold and underline by ape

Lucy is important because it walked upright, but did not have the brain capacity of a human.

Xlnt pics! That skeleton surely looks like mine!:)
But is it dated correctly?

"Zihlman compares the pygmy chimpanzee to "Lucy," one of the oldest hominid fossils known and finds the similarities striking. They are almost identical in body size, in stature; and in brain size.... These commonalties, Zihlman argues indicate that pygmy chimps use their limbs in much the same way Lucy did...."
ADRIENNE L ZIHLMAN, U. C. Santa Cruz,
Science News, Vol.123, Feb.5. 1983.

How is that new AMS working?
Any thing newer since 1989?
Why wd or shd a r-evoltuion occur if Brown is right?
Is Zihlman right?

Alun wrote:
And later came species like [the ones you showed].

Was Ergaster found before 1989?
And if not, does Brown's comments and this statement below still apply?

"A great legend has grown up to plague both paleontologists and anthropologists. It is that one of them can take a tooth or a small and broken piece of bone, gaze at it, and pass his hand over his forehead once or twice, and then take a sheet of paper and draw a picture of what the whole animal looked like as it tramped the Terriary terrain. If this were quite true, the anthropologists would make the F.B.I. look like a troop of Boy Scouts." W. Howells, Harvard, MANKIND SO FAR.

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:Are you saying that the cell has grown even more complex since the first one?

Most definitely. Even today, bacterial cells are next to nothing compared to eukaryotic cells. ....

Xlnt!:) Again!

But what of this statement by Monod?

"....we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been. The simplest living system known to us, the bacterial cell....in....its overall chemical plan is the same as that of all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do, for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing 'primitive' about them....no vestiges of truly primitive structures are discernible."
Jacques Monod, French biochemist, Nobel Prize winner, CHANCE AND NECESSITY. underline by ape

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:What was the criteria for talking about 'the growing complexity of the form of life on Earth.'?

Pretty much just what it sounds like; more specialization, more order, and usually the mobilization of more resources.

ape wrote:Do things usually only work from simple to complex or do they also usually work from complex to simple or do they usually work both ways?

Both ways, I guess. I am not really using complexity versus simplicity to say anything definitive, just describe what evolution looks like to me.

Both OPPOSITE ways! Xlnt!
So then, you realise that things that are complicatingly simple also look complex, and things that simply complicating also look simple, which means that we can't go by sight or by what it looks like to us only. Big rule in Science as you know: things are never only what they seem.

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:If they work both ways, which evolutionist or 'nists determined that the simple form of life came first as the usual suspect?;)

Paleontologists. The first fossils are of bacteria.

And what are and where are the ancestors of bacteria?
And what say you to these guys?

"I am also aware of the fact that, at least in my own subject of paleoanthropology, "theory" - heavily influenced by implicit ideas almost always dominates "data". ....Ideas that are totally unrelated to actual fossils have dominated theory building, which in turn strongly influence the way fossils are interpreted." David Pilbeam, Yale, quoted in BONES OF CONTENTION.
underline by ape

"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change...All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt."
Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist at Harvard,(1977)
underline by ape

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, all the while really knowing that it does not."
Niles Eldredge, Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History.
underline and bold by ape

"It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to be known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." George Gaylord Simpson, professor of vertebrate paleontology at Harvard.(1965) underline by ape

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:Isn't dealing with the evolution of life while making no conclusions about how evolution happened nor about where the life that evolution evolves comes from... analogous to, similar to, comparable to... talking about the rain-bow while not discusing where rain comes from, ... or talking about words without talking about where letters came from,

Yes. The idea is that if we observe things without any distractions, we'll be getting less biased data to work with.

But the Bias of Hatred works whether one is distracted with distractions or with no distractions! In fact, the focus of the Bias of Hatred works 'better' in and on its object when there are NO distractions!

We have to look at the specifics and look at, by keeping it in mind at all times, the overall body of evidence at the same thime! And vice versa! We can walk and talk and chew gum at the same time!:) So there is only one way out:

This double-duty necessitates the Love in attitude for attractions and distractions or repulsions, for the atom and the Uni.

ape wrote:or talking about the natural selection in life without talking about where life came from nor where NS came from or how NS happened?

Well natural selection is in part an explanation of where natural selection came from and how natural selection happens, but I do think it's a very separate issue from the genesis of life in the beginning. [/quote]

Hmmmm To me that NS sounds like God himself being self-creating! God explaining where God came and comes from: himself, and HOW he happens: in the very Love by which he defines himself!:) Hmmmmmm

Cd Natural Selection be another name for God, and vice versa? Is NS God in other words, and vice versa?

So don't you think that everything is interconnected?

“Einstein shows that the holism of Quantum Theory asserts that there is a sense in which everything is connected to everything else. This has been confirmed."
John Archibald Wheeler,1911-2008, Director of the Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Texas-Austin, Joseph Henry Professor of Physics Emeritus at Princeton University.

Alun, what is happening is this:

"It was-and still is-very hard to arrive at this concept from [ONLY] inside biology. The trouble lay in an unremitting cultural struggle which had developed from 1860 onward between biologists on the one hand and the supporters of old beliefs on the other.

The old believers said that rabbits had been created by God using methods too wonderful for us to comprehend. The new believers said that rabbits had been created from sludge, by methods too complex for us to calculate and by methods likely enough involving improbable happenings.

Improbable happenings replaced miracles,
and sludge replaced God,
with believers both old and new seeking to cover up their ignorance in clouds of words, but different [OPPOSITE] words.

It was over the [OPPOSITE] words that
passions [OF HATE] raged,
passions [OF HATE] which continue to rumble on in the modern world,
passions [OF HATE] that one can read about with hilarious satisfaction in the columns of the weekly science magazine Nature and listen to in basso profundo pronouncements from learned scientific societies."
Fred Hoyle, late mathematician, physicist and Professor of Astronomy, Cambridge University, "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999.

So?

Only Love and Respect for all words and their opposites can solve this problem and, of course, solve all other problems we have in the world today and in the future.

Words are the eyes of our eyes, and Love is the Eye of all words and their opposites!:) Is why we have the Mind's Eye or the Mind's I!

Alun wrote:
Perhaps this will make more sense to you once we get to the natural selection part of the argument; there are many things that occasionally are said of natural selection, but it is a fairly limited idea.

Thanx! It will make more sense to me then since it already makes so much sense to me now!:)

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:Hope you had and/or is still having a nice Xmas or holiday!:)

ape wrote:That reply was excellent, especially the spirit of collegiality that Love is which I sensed IN it! Plus the pictures and illustrations and all! I love all of that!:)
I commend you!:)

I hope you find my further explanations as lucid as those, although unfortunately not everything is so easy to explain with the help of pictures.

ape wrote:"Eleven human skeletons, the earliest known human remains in the Western hemisphere, have recently been dated by this new accelerator mass spectrometer technique. All eleven were dated at about 5,000 radiocarbon years or less! If more of the claimed evolutionary ancestors of man are tested and are also found to contain carbon-14, a major scientific revolution will occur and thousands of textbooks will become obsolete."
Walter T. Brown, In the Beginning (1989).
bold and underline by ape

Ah! Here's someone who does agree with you. He's saying even more than it looks like though. First, the mainstream timeline says that humans as we know them first appeared in Africa at least 195,000 years ago, since that's the age of the oldest fossils we've found (source). So which fossils is Brown referring to?

Another problem with Brown, besides e.g. his claim that we have no observed 'organic' evolution, is that he claims carbon-14 dating is inaccurate. According to him, the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere did not remain constant before the (biblical) flood, when he says there were so many trees producing CO2, the level of C-14 in the atmosphere was not in equilibrium. In other words, he argues that there was less C-14 in the past, which is why things are dated as being so old. Here's a picture of this idea:
According to the above graph, there is no way to explain K-40 and uranium amounts, which corroborate the mainstream theory. E.g. K-40 clocks restart when rock is resolidified; unless Brown is arguing that rock formations were put onto the earth from somewhere else (where those rocks had flowed out of a volcano), his idea doesn't make much sense. And anyway, are you actually wanting me to prove that the Earth is not only 6,000 years old?

Because the dating we are using for life on Earth and the Earth itself scales up--up to, e.g., rubidium-87, which has a half-life of 50 billion years. This element decays to a specific isotope of strontium; the amount measured is not in comparison to 'normal' rubidium, but to the product of the degradation, strontium-87 (which in turn is compared to strontium-86 to see how it differs from its natural starting ratio). The dating used for recent fossils and rock can be correlated to the dating used for older fossils and rocks, which in turn can be correlated all the way back to meteors and stars, where there certainly was no intermediate source of contamination. And of course the decay we're talking about can be recreated under controlled conditions, which is how we know the rate of decay in the first place.

ape wrote:Xlnt pics! That skeleton surely looks like mine!:)
But is it dated correctly?

Yes.

ape wrote:"Zihlman compares the pygmy chimpanzee to "Lucy," one of the oldest hominid fossils known and finds the similarities striking. They are almost identical in body size, in stature; and in brain size.... These commonalties, Zihlman argues indicate that pygmy chimps use their limbs in much the same way Lucy did...."
ADRIENNE L ZIHLMAN, U. C. Santa Cruz,
Science News, Vol.123, Feb.5. 1983.

This is essentially a misquote. The part that is cut off in the middle reads:

"They are almost identical in body size, in stature, and in brain size, she notes, and the major differences (the hip and the foot) represent the younger Lucy's adaptation to bipedal walking."

A.k.a. Lucy evolved for bipedal walking. This is further corroborated by fossilized bipedal tracks matching the skeletons of Lucy's species.

ape wrote:"A great legend has grown up to plague both paleontologists and anthropologists...." W. Howells, Harvard, MANKIND SO FAR.

I showed you a nearly complete skull and a very large set of bones, not a tooth or just one rib.

ape wrote:"....we have no idea what the structure of a primitive cell might have been. The simplest living system known to us, the bacterial cell....in....its overall chemical plan is the same as that of all other living beings. It employs the same genetic code and the same mechanism of translation as do, for example, human cells. Thus the simplest cells available to us for study have nothing 'primitive' about them....no vestiges of truly primitive structures are discernible."
Jacques Monod, French biochemist, Nobel Prize winner, CHANCE AND NECESSITY. underline by ape

As I've said, the oldest fossils are essentially bacterial. Bacteria are indeed markedly simpler than us, plants, and other animals, but if abiogenesis is true, the first life was almost inconceivably simple, not bacterial (or even cellular).

ape wrote:And what are and where are the ancestors of bacteria?

They're extinct, if indeed theories of abiogenesis are correct. Bacteria (together with Archaebacteria) are simple enough to fill most basic niches that would've provided resources for the first life, but bacteria would have had many advantages over non-cellular life forms. Further, there is almost no way that, if abiogenesis is correct, we'd find fossils of this most primitive life; these would be nothing more than free-floating macromolecules.

ape wrote:"I am also aware of the fact that, at least in my own subject of paleoanthropology, ....Ideas that are totally unrelated to actual fossils have dominated theory building, which in turn strongly influence the way fossils are interpreted." David Pilbeam, Yale, quoted in BONES OF CONTENTION.

Sure, this is similar to what was said earlier by Patterson. He is not dispensing with the bare-bones theories, he is just trying to emphasize that people should analyze the evidence without trying to make it work; they should see where the evidence leads.

ape wrote:"The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change..."
Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist at Harvard,(1977)

"...we have proffered a collective tacit acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change,..."
Niles Eldredge, Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History.

ape wrote:"It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families and that nearly all new categories above the level of families appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to be known, gradual, completely continuous transitional sequences." George Gaylord Simpson, professor of vertebrate paleontology at Harvard.(1965) underline by ape

Same thing as the two guys above.

ape wrote:Cd Natural Selection be another name for God, and vice versa? Is NS God in other words, and vice versa?

Errr... When I power up my computer, we explain that according to, at a fundamental level, theories of electrical current and resistance. These are theories of how the phenomenon of electricity works, and what really leads it to occur. That is just what it means to explain somethings occurrence, and doesn't relate to God in any further fashion so far as I can tell.

ape wrote:So don't you think that everything is interconnected?

Through our relationship to it at least, yeah, (and possibly in an slight nearly unknowable quantum sense) but it doesn't help us to understand something to only say they're related. That's the first step, but we need more to work with.

What I mean is that the lucidity of Love & Respect in HOW you said everything you said shone thru!:}

"The secret of genius is to carry [Love which is] the spirit of childhood into maturity."
T. H. Huxley

And so basically satisfied me that you are a genuine or that you trying to be a genuine evolutionist!

Which is all I am and it is all about!:)

Alun wrote:
Another problem with Brown, besides e.g. his claim that we have no observed 'organic' evolution, is that he claims carbon-14 dating is inaccurate. According to him, the amount of C-14 in the atmosphere did not remain constant before the (biblical) flood, when he says there were so many trees producing CO2, the level of C-14 in the atmosphere was not in equilibrium. In other words, he argues that there was less C-14 in the past, which is why things are dated as being so old. Here's a picture of this idea:

Nice pic!

Now here is a similar scenario:
The temp for the first 180 days of a certain year is 0 degrees, and is 100 degrees for the last 180 days.

Is it accurate for me to assume and to conclude that, because the true average temp is 50 degrees for the whole year, the temp for the ist 180 days was 50 degrees?

Example: Suppose I create an adult tree: can you assume that you know the age of the tree based on its tree rings?

Alun wrote:
And anyway, are you actually wanting me to prove that the Earth is not only 6,000 years old?

No! The Earth may be even more than 4 billion years old based on Genesis 1:1-2.

Alun wrote:
This is essentially a misquote. The part that is cut off in the middle reads: Quote:
"They are almost identical in body size, in stature, and in brain size, she notes, and the major differences (the hip and the foot) represent the younger Lucy's adaptation to bipedal walking."

A.k.a. Lucy evolved for bipedal walking. This is further corroborated by fossilized bipedal tracks matching the skeletons of Lucy's species.

Thanx for that missing piece of the quote.
But cdn't the similarities make the date for Lucy later?

Alun wrote:
I showed you a nearly complete skull and a very large set of bones, not a tooth or just one rib.

Good point! But you have heard of Piltdown Man and etc.
What more proof do you have that that skeleton is not a hoax?

Alun wrote:
As I've said, the oldest fossils are essentially bacterial. Bacteria are indeed markedly simpler than us, plants, and other animals, but if abiogenesis is true, the first life was almost inconceivably simple, not bacterial (or even cellular).

underline by ape

Alun wrote:
They [the ancestors of bacteria] 're extinct, if indeed theories of abiogenesis are correct. Bacteria (together with Archaebacteria) are simple enough to fill most basic niches that would've provided resources for the first life, but bacteria would have had many advantages over non-cellular life forms. Further, there is almost no way that, if abiogenesis is correct, we'd find fossils of this most primitive life; these would be nothing more than free-floating macromolecules.

brackets & bunderline by ape

And what if abiogenesis is not true nor correct, OR not ONLY true or correct?

And what is it that made those first molecules develop?

How cd NS develop the first molecule if the first molecule/s had to develop before NS kicked in?

Or, are you saying that NS was there before the first molecule/s?

And other than NS, what else existed before the first molecule/s?

Alun wrote:
Sure, this is similar to what was said earlier by Patterson. He is not dispensing with the bare-bones theories, he is just trying to emphasize that people should analyze the evidence without trying to make it work; they should see where the evidence leads.

And where does or cd the evidence of life lead from & to?

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:Cd Natural Selection be another name for God, and vice versa? Is NS God in other words, and vice versa?

Errr... When I power up my computer, we explain that according to, at a fundamental level, theories of electrical current and resistance. These are theories of how the phenomenon of electricity works, and what really leads it to occur. That is just what it means to explain somethings occurrence, and doesn't relate to God in any further fashion so far as I can tell.

Why shd not evidence of life and natural selection lead also to the conclusion that life naturally came from life as well as also from death just as any type of power and resistance--electrical, chemical, etc-- can naturally come from both power and weakness, and from both resisitance and no resistance?

Alun wrote:

ape wrote: So don't you think that everything is interconnected?

Through our relationship to it at least, yeah, (and possibly in an slight nearly unknowable quantum sense) but it doesn't help us to understand something to only say they're related. That's the first step, but we need more to work with.

Xlnt: things are known and known to be connected or related both by their connections and disconnections, both by their attractions and repulsions!

So life can come from both death/abiogenesis AND also from life/biogenesis?

Right?

Last edited by ape on December 27th, 2009, 11:21 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Richw9090, I was rewording the statement of premise P3-1 in C2-1 to more clearly describe evolution:

Alun wrote:Fossils show specific groups living at specific times; with no fossils of humans, e.g., forming 3.8 billion years ago, and fossils of e.g. dinosaurs which are no longer extant today [2].

Which means the fossil record indicates that new species were present, and that old species died out. In other words, if you assume the fossil record can identify the life on Earth (C1-1), "the changing and growing complexity of the form of life on earth, as well as vast extinction of life, has occurred over the last 3.8 billion years." The "growing complexity" was just a generic description of the fossil record, which I admittedly did not state explicitly in P3-1.

I'll consider making that step more explicit.

*****************

ape wrote:Example: Suppose I create an adult tree: can you assume that you know the age of the tree based on its tree rings?

No, there needs to be another control. E.g. we could to grow our own tree, and see how the rings develop. I think it'd be safe to assume the trees developed the same way, unless there were evidence otherwise. We have said control in the age of fossils, since we can compare and align the radiometric dating of many different elements.

This works unless you consider that God (or whomever) could've made the known universe look just like it has been around for 14 billion years, even though He made it only about 6,000 years ago--just like you could've somehow created the tree to look just like it were a normally growing adult. However, this possibility is irrelevant to science, since as stated all empirical evidence is to the contrary. Technically, I do not view science as a search for truth, but as a search of empirical coherence only; stuff that we can work with to predict phenomena.

ape wrote:No! The Earth may be even more than 4 billion years old based on Genesis 1:1-2.

Ok, are you concerned about the possibility that humans were around as soon as the earliest life forms were? I.e. do you accept the mainstream interpretation of the fossil record?

ape wrote:Thanx for that missing piece of the quote.
But cdn't the similarities make the date for Lucy later?

You mean Lucy's similarities to the bonobo? I'm not sure how that gives much evidence of her age, just the bonobo's close relationship to humans. Lucy's age was determined absolutely by radiometric dating of the rocks surrounding the fossil--she died approximately 3.2 million years ago (source).

ape wrote:Good point! But you have heard of Piltdown Man and etc.
What more proof do you have that that skeleton is not a hoax?

Piltdown man was a compilation of different species' bones, and uncovered by an amateur. Lucy's bones themselves are unique; it is not as if some of her bones resemble humans', while others resemble chimpanzees' (Piltdown man had an orangutan's jaw, but a human upper skull).

ape wrote:And what if abiogenesis is not true nor correct, OR not ONLY true or correct? Idea

And what is it that made those first molecules develop?

I was just explaining the theory to you; the theory of evolution by natural selection doesn't say anything specific about how bacteria came about. It's possible that they rode in on an asteroid, were planted by advanced aliens, or were created by an act of God. But the rest of the evidence shows that they evolved naturally without an overall plan to eventually form the species living on Earth today.

ape wrote:How cd NS develop the first molecule if the first molecule/s had to develop before NS kicked in?

Like I said, natural selection is not used to explain abiogenesis; abiogenesis is pure chemistry, and far more complicated than natural selection. However, if abiogenesis were true, then whichever of the earliest 'living' molecules reproduced would, in fact, reproduce, and thus be 'naturally selected' to that extent.

ape wrote:Why shd not evidence of life and natural selection lead also to the conclusion that life naturally came from life as well as also from death just as any type of power and resistance--electrical, chemical, etc-- can naturally come from both power and weakness, and from both resisitance and no resistance?

What are you saying here?

ape wrote:So life can come from both death/abiogenesis AND also from life/biogenesis?... Right?

The only life from life we've observed so far is the continuation of a genetic line, and abiogenesis is in theoretical development; we do not know.

ape wrote:Example: Suppose I create an adult tree: can you assume that you know the age of the tree based on its tree rings?

No, there needs to be another control. .....

This works unless you consider that God (or whomever) could've made the known universe look just like it has been around for 14 billion years, even though He made it only about 6,000 years ago--just like you could've somehow created the tree to look just like it were a normally growing adult.

Exactly!
That's exactly what I meant!:idea;
So have you worked that possibility into your theory?:idea:

This is why Einstein said this:

‘Subtle [tricky, hide-and-seeking] is the Lord, but malicious he is not" (Raffinert ist der Herrgott aber boshaft ist er nicht’).
When asked by a colleague what he meant by that, he replied:

‘Nature hides her secret because of her essential loftiness, but not by means of ruse’ (Die Natur verbirgt ihr Geheimnis durch die Erhabenheit ihres Wesens, aber nicht durch List’).
Albert Einstein, vi, 319, ‘Subtle Is The Lord …’ The Science and The Life of Albert Einstein, Abraham Pais. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hmmmmm You are thinking!:)
Xlnt!

Alun wrote:
However, this possibility is irrelevant to science, since as stated all empirical evidence is to the contrary. Technically, I do not view science as a search for truth, but as a search of empirical coherence only; stuff that we can work with to predict phenomena.

Ooops, Alun! The CONTRARY is the very key you HAVE to consider! See? And you came up with that possibility in your own words by your own self--even tho I admit I gave you a hint!:) You are easily fooled otherwise by man and by nature! Have you ever been conned? I wd predict that you have already been conned! No one can con you without your prior permission!:idea:

"567. The two contrary reasons. We must begin with that; without that we understand nothing, and all is heretical; and we must even add at the end of each truth that the opposite truth is to be remembered."Blaise Pascal. Pensees.

"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement.
The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." Niels Bohr

And that is why Einstein also said this about sciencTISTS:

"What has perhaps been overlooked [ by scientists and whoever else due to their irrational Hatred or Malice of the irrational] is the irrational, [THE IRRELEVANT!] the inconsistent, the droll, even the insane, which nature, inexhaustibly operative, implants [as in planting evidence!] into the individual, seemingly for her own amusement. These things are singled out only in the crucible of one's own mind." Albert Einstein

You have an opportunity to take the path less travelled in science, to make it live up to its promise of NOT ignoring what SEEMS irrelevant or ignorant!

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:No! The Earth may be even more than 4 billion years old based on Genesis 1:1-2.

Ok, are you concerned about the possibility that humans were around as soon as the earliest life forms were? I.e. do you accept the mainstream interpretation of the fossil record?

Either way is open to me!
No closed mind about anything --except having a closed mind!:) ----that may seem irrelevant!

How you can have this permanent Scientific frame of Mind is like this:

“The longing to behold … pre-established harmony is the source of inexhaustible persistence and patience with which we see Planck devoting himself to the most general problems of our science without letting himself be deflected by goals which are more profitable and easier to achieve. I have often heard that colleagues would like to attribute this attitude to exceptional will-power and discipline; I believe entirely wrongly so. The emotional state which enables such achievements is similar to that of the religious person or the person in Love; the daily pursuit does not originate from a design or program but from a direct need.” Albert Einstein, 26-27, SITL by Abraham Pais

A direct need as in Love is all we need and all we need is Love!:)

Some more encouragement:
“When I was a boy a certain prayer we said every day in Hebrew contained the words to love God with all your heart all your soul, and all your mind. My understanding of these words, that is, this notion of wholeness--not necessarily directed toward God but as a way of living--had a tremendous impact on me. I also felt a sense of nature being whole very early. I felt internally related to trees, mountains, and stars in a way I wasn't to all the chaos of the cities.

When I first studied quantum mechanics I felt again that sense of internal relationship--that it was describing something that I was experiencing directly rather than just thinking about.

The notion of spin particularly fascinated me: the idea that when something is spinning in a certain direction, it could also spin in the other [CONTRARY] direction but that somehow the two directions together would be a spin in a third direction. I felt that somehow that described experience with the processes of the mind. In thinking about spin I felt I was in a direct relationship to nature. In quantum mechanics I came closer to my intuitive sense of nature.” David Bohm

Alun wrote:
Piltdown man was a compilation of different species' bones, and uncovered by an amateur. Lucy's bones themselves are unique; it is not as if some of her bones resemble humans', while others resemble chimpanzees' (Piltdown man had an orangutan's jaw, but a human upper skull

Thanx.

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:And what if abiogenesis is not true nor correct, OR not ONLY true or correct? Idea

And what is it that made those first molecules develop?

I was just explaining the theory to you; the theory of evolution by natural selection doesn't say anything specific about how bacteria came about. It's possible that they rode in on an asteroid, were planted by advanced aliens, or were created by an act of God. But the rest of the evidence shows that they evolved naturally without an overall plan to eventually form the species living on Earth today.

Xlnt! You consider more than one possibility!:)

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:How cd NS develop the first molecule if the first molecule/s had to develop before NS kicked in?

Like I said, natural selection is not used to explain abiogenesis; abiogenesis is pure chemistry, and far more complicated than natural selection. However, if abiogenesis were true, then whichever of the earliest 'living' molecules reproduced would, in fact, reproduce, and thus be 'naturally selected' to that extent.

Good! But what is used to explain NS itself?

Alun wrote:

ape wrote:Why shd not evidence of life and natural selection lead also to the conclusion that life naturally came from life as well as also from death just as any type of power and resistance--electrical, chemical, etc-- can naturally come from both power and weakness, and from both resisitance and no resistance?

What are you saying here?

That you have to consider what's irrelevant --to you!:idea:

Which you did do and consider when you spoke above about the 3 possibilities between an asteroid, advanced aliens and God!:)

So you are doing great! The consistency will come and is coming!:) As it used to be with me before I learned to stay permamnently in Love, my consistency was in my inconsistency!:)

ape wrote:So life can come from both death/abiogenesis AND also from life/biogenesis?... Right?

The only life from life we've observed so far is the continuation of a genetic line, and abiogenesis is in theoretical development; we do not know.[/quote]

Xlnt! But may I kindly remind you that Wald's experiment has already disproved abiogenesis and/or spontaneous generation of life:

"This was only one of Pasteur's experiments. It is no easy matter to deal with so deeply ingrained and common-sense a belief as that in spontaneous generation. One can ask for nothing better in such a pass than a noisy and stubborn opponent, and this Pasteur had in the naturalist Felix Pouchet, whose arguments before the French Academy of Sciences drove Pasteur to more and more rigorous experiments. When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation.

We tell this story to beginning students of biology as though it represents a triumph of reason over mysticism. In fact it is very nearly the opposite.

The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation;
the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation.

There is no third position.

For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a "philosophical necessity."
It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated.

Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.

I think a scientist has no choice but to approach the origin of life through a hypothesis of spontaneous generation. [In spite of all the evidence to the contrary.]

What the controversy reviewed above showed to be untenable is only the belief that living organisms arrive spontaneously under present conditions.
We have now to face a somewhat different problem:
how organisms may have arisen spontaneously under different conditions in some former period, granted that they do so no longer."

One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.

Time is the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years... Given so much time the 'impossible' becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles."
George Wald (1967 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine), "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, vol. 191 1954, p. 46.
underlines, bolds and brackets by ape

As I said, it is not a scientific worry--it does undermine arguments that presume to metaphysically rule out God's existence, but the theory I'm talking about here is not intended to have such implications.

ape wrote:You are easily fooled otherwise by man and by nature! Have you ever been conned? I wd predict that you have already been conned! No one can con you without your prior permission!:idea:

Sure, there are an infinite number of ways in which nature could be composed in a manner exactly phenomenally resembling something else. But so what? We ought to stick with what explains the phenomena until we have reason to add to the theory. Un-evidenced extraneous possibilities do not add to our scientific understanding. (Although, again, they are epistemically relevant to metaphysical arguments.) This is a consequence of the foundational argument; when a theory does not add to explanation, it cannot be better supported than another theory, so in effect the simplest of working theories is the one used.

ape wrote:You have an opportunity to take the path less travelled in science, to make it live up to its promise of NOT ignoring what SEEMS irrelevant or ignorant!

I am not ignoring any phenomena, I am ignoring extraneous possiblities--and only for the purposes of phenomenal inquiry. I do not disregard these possibilities when doing philosophy to which they are relevant.

ape wrote:Good! But what is used to explain NS itself?

Biology; natural selection is just organisms reproducing.

ape wrote:

Alun wrote:The only life from life we've observed so far is the continuation of a genetic line, and abiogenesis is in theoretical development; we do not know.

"This was only one of Pasteur's experiments. It is no easy matter to deal with so deeply ingrained and common-sense a belief as that in spontaneous generation... When he had finished, nothing remained of the belief in spontaneous generation.
..."
George Wald (1967 Nobel Prize winner in Medicine), "The Origin of Life," Scientific American, vol. 191 1954, p. 46.
underlines, bolds and brackets by ape

I think you've given me a similar quote already, to which I would've tried to explain that while abiogenesis is a type of spontaneous generation, it is not the theory of spontaneous generation, which was that flies, bacteria, and fungus are generated solely out of inanimate matter. This was meant to explain the appearance of mushrooms after a rain storm, flies on a rotting piece of meat, etc. What I'm talking about is very different: Abiogenesis in the history of life is the theory that the early Earth conditions were uniquely capable of generating a very small amount of reproducing molecules, which eventually became reproducing macromolecules, which in turn eventually became cells.

Alun wrote:P1-2) Organisms reproduce themselves using their genetic coding, usually DNA [4][5].
P2-2) Reproduction of DNA (and RNA) molecules in biological systems often leads to small mutations or changes in the DNA molecule [6].
P3-2) Changes in DNA can lead to changes in protein structure [6].
* This premise is often referred to as part of the "central dogma" of biology; that DNA is ultimately translated into amino acid sequences.
* While "dogma" may sound like a strong term, we have actually synthesized DNA from simple compounds and given it to bacteria--who then use that DNA [7].
* It is further standard practice to give bacterial cells particular DNA sequences to have them produce the protein encoded by that DNA [8].

Hi Alun,

Sorry for the delay in respsonding.

Where did the DNA and RNA come from?
Where did the amino acids and protein come from?

Why wd dogma sound like a strong term when evolution is a belief system?

"Another reason that scientists are so prone to throw the baby out with the bath water is that Science itself, as I have suggested, is a religion.

The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah.

This is particularly the case when we have come to science from a culture and home in which belief in God is firmly associated with ignorance, superstition, rigidity and hypocrisy.

Then we have emotional as well as intellectual motives to smash the idols of primitive faith.

A mark of maturity in scientists, however, is their awareness that science may be as subject to dogmatism as any other religion."
Peck, M. Scott [psychiatrist and Medical Director of New Milford Hospital Mental Health Clinic, Connecticut, USA], "The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth," [1978], Arrow: London, 1990.

ape wrote:Where did the DNA and RNA come from?
Where did the amino acids and protein come from?

As I said, the theory of evolution starts with bacteria--which have and constantly manufacture new DNA, RNA, and proteins. Abiogenesis, divine intervention, or an asteroid might've put the first bacteria, DNA, RNA, etc., here, but that's not evolution. Hence, natural selection, which is part of the mainstream theory explaining evolution, does not encompass the origin of the first DNA, RNA, or proteins.

ape wrote:Why wd dogma sound like a strong term when evolution is a belief system?

Because 'dogma' in religious contexts implies a conviction held without empirical evidence. A religious conviction is central to emotional, social, and spiritual justification, and so religious dogma rests on a huge amount of said justification. Analogously, however, the 'central dogma' of biology (that DNA is transcribed by RNA, which is translated to proteins) has been empirically proven in tens of thousands of contexts, and is central to the understanding of the rest of modern biology. The difference being that science is only talking about phenomena, which everyone cares about, whereas religion is almost always talking in terms of subjective standards. Hence the dogma of religion is something dangerous when it is imposed on others, whereas the 'dogma' of science is not even moralistic; the 'dogma' of science is only phenomenal.

ape wrote:"...The neophyte scientist, recently come or converted to the world view of science, can be every bit as fanatical as a Christian crusader or a soldier of Allah. ..."
Peck, M. Scott

That's great, but I'm only talking about empirical evidence here. Any scientist who lets bias direct his/her inquiry is not doing good science. As a matter of fact, I do not want to smash any idols, I just want people to understand what science is, why the theory of evolution by natural selection is good science, and ultimately accept that this is what needs to be taught in science class.

Alun wrote:
As I said, the theory of evolution starts with bacteria--which have and constantly manufacture new DNA, RNA, and proteins. Abiogenesis, divine intervention, or an asteroid might've put the first bacteria, DNA, RNA, etc., here, but that's not evolution. Hence, natural selection, which is part of the mainstream theory explaining evolution, does not encompass the origin of the first DNA, RNA, or proteins.

Ok. So NS or Evolution Theory is a limited explanation of the evidence out there.

Example: Knowing that the natural selection of the process of a fire for flammable material causes the fire to proceed and destroy a home is of very limited benefit if we don't know how or why the fire started.

"What is the meaning of Life, or for that matter, of the life of any creature?
To know the answer to
this question means to be religious.
You ask:
Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question?
I answer:
the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless [and hates that meaninglessness] is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life." Albert Einstein, April 24, 1955 NYT Magazine.

Alun wrote:
Because 'dogma' in religious contexts implies a conviction held without empirical evidence.

But those wd be very poor theists who wd have convictions without empirical evidence when all theists are instructed to PROVE ALL THINGS: 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21: just as those wd be very poor scientists who wd have any convictions without proof.

Alun wrote:
A religious conviction is central to emotional, social, and spiritual justification, and so religious dogma rests on a huge amount of said justification.

Hmmmm That is, a very poor religious or scientific conviction WITHOUT PROOF is central to emotional, social, and spiritual AND SCIENTIFIC justification, and so THAT KIND OF PROOFLESS religious AND SCIENTIFIC dogma rests on a huge amount of said UNPROVEN justification.

Right?

"A legitimate conflict between Science and Religion cannot exist.
Science without the Religion is lame,
Religion without the Science is blind."
So once wrote AE to explain his personal creed:
'A religious person is devout in the sense he has no doubt of the significance of those super-personal objects and goals which neither require nor are capable of rational foundation.'Einstein, 'Subtle is the Lord, but Malicious he is Not' by Abraham Pais.

Alun wrote:
Analogously, however, the 'central dogma' of biology (that DNA is transcribed by RNA, which is translated to proteins) has been empirically proven in tens of thousands of contexts, and is central to the understanding of the rest of modern biology.

And so too, analogously, the 'central dogma' of theology (that WORDS and THEIR OPPOSITES are transcribed by SOUNDS and LETTERS, which ARE then RE- translated INto ALL WORDS AND THEIR OPPOSITES) has been empirically proven in tens of tRILLIONS of contexts, and is central to the understanding of the rest of modern THEology AND TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF BIology and all other ologies.

Alun wrote:
The difference being that science is only talking about phenomena, which everyone cares about, whereas religion is almost always talking in terms of subjective standards.

That is, religion based on proof and science based on proof are only talking about phenomena, which everyone cares about or loves, whereas UNPROVEN RELIGION and UNPROVEN SCIENCE are almost always talking in terms of subjective standards.

Right?

"A universe with a God would like quite different from a universe without one.
A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different.
So the most basic claims of religion are scientific.
Religion is a scientific theory." Richard Dawkins

Alun wrote:
Hence the dogma of religion is something dangerous when it is imposed on others, whereas the 'dogma' of science is not even moralistic; the 'dogma' of science is only phenomenal.

Hence the dogma of UNPROVEN religion AND UNPROVEN SCIENCE ARE something dangerous when either is imposed on others, whereas the 'dogma' of PROVEN RELIGION AND PROVEN SCIENCE ARE not even ONLY moralistic BUT ALSO PHILOSOPHICAL SUCH AS 'THERE IS A TIME FOR EACH THING AND ITS OPPOSITE' and 'FOR EVERY ACTION THERE IS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTION'; the 'dogma' of PROVEN RELIGION AND PROVEN science ARE ALSO phenomenal.

Alun wrote:... but I'm only talking about empirical evidence here. Any scientist who lets bias direct his/her inquiry is not doing good science.

Exactly! So you and I are talking NOT about ONLY phenomena BUT ALS0 ABOUT THE RIGHT MORAL ATTITUDE!

Alun wrote:.
As a matter of fact, I do not want to smash any idols, I just want people to understand what science is, why the theory of evolution by natural selection is good science, and ultimately accept that this is what needs to be taught in science class.

Other than smashing that idol of the Bias or Prejudice of Hatred!

Exactly!

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices [of Hatred]."
-William James

So you and I are also proving why we want all people to understand WHAT both PROVEN RELIGION and PROVEN SCIENCE are, and WHY proven Religion and Proven Science are both good religion and good science and both scientific religion and religious science, and ultimately accept that both PROVEN RELIGION and PROVEN SCIENCE are what need to be both taught in Religion Class and in Science Class.
QED.

“The interpretation of religion, as here advanced, implies a dependence of science on the religious attitude, a relation which, in our predominantly materialistic age, is only too easily overlooked.

While it is true that scientific results are entirely independent from religious or moral considerations, those individuals to whom we owe the great creative achievements of science were all of them imbued with the truly religious conviction that this universe of ours is something perfect and susceptible to the rational striving for knowledge.

If this conviction had not been a strongly emotional one and if those searching for knowledge had not been inspired by Spinoza's Amor Dei Intellectualis, they would hardly have been capable of that untiring devotion which alone enables man to attain his greatest achievements.”Albert Einstein

ape wrote:Example: Knowing that the natural selection of the process of a fire for flammable material causes the fire to proceed and destroy a home is of very limited benefit if we don't know how or why the fire started.

I don't think that quite lines up; it doesn't matter how or why the fire started. It only matters what started burning first--the fire will proceed the same way if someone deliberately threw a match onto flammable material, or if the dog knocked a candle onto the same material--to explain how the fire proceeds.

Likewise, we know bacteria was living on the planet first (if you accept the fossil record); we don't need to know how (or why) the bacteria got there in order to talk about how evolution proceeds.

Now, if you want to impose a moral framework on the system, in either example, the start does have important implications; in the fire example, the first is arson while the second is an accident (assuming the dog couldn't have meant it). Likewise, abiogenesis/aliens/God would have moral implications, but that is not what evolution is, so it is not what natural selection explains.

ape wrote:Hmmmm That is, a very poor religious or scientific conviction WITHOUT PROOF is central to emotional, social, and spiritual AND SCIENTIFIC justification, and so THAT KIND OF PROOFLESS religious AND SCIENTIFIC dogma rests on a huge amount of said UNPROVEN justification.

I don't follow this sentence. I'd say that science is generally without emotional, social, or spiritual justification. Religion is generally without empirical justification, despite Thessalonians.

ape wrote:And so too, analogously, the 'central dogma' of theology (that WORDS and THEIR OPPOSITES are transcribed by SOUNDS and LETTERS, which ARE then RE- translated INto ALL WORDS AND THEIR OPPOSITES) has been empirically proven in tens of tRILLIONS of contexts, and is central to the understanding of the rest of modern THEology AND TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF BIology and all other ologies.

I think that would be a sort of foundation for inquiry--not really 'central' so much as rudimentary. But sure, I agree that language is a part of all studies, and that we have empirical justification for believing that language can be understood.

ape wrote:That is, religion based on proof and science based on proof are only talking about phenomena, which everyone cares about or loves, whereas UNPROVEN RELIGION and UNPROVEN SCIENCE are almost always talking in terms of subjective standards.

No, science is always talking about phenomena--by definition. Religion that is not empirically proven is not empirically proven, sure, but generally the context of religious claims are moral and metaphysical. While occasionally empirical evidence is referred to in order to make these claims, I think predominantly phenomena are not of central importance to religion, and likewise the few empirical claims that religion makes (e.g. "Jesus rose again") are subsidiary to the moral and metaphysical claims they support (e.g. "we are all forgiven and loved by God").

What I'm really talking about here are the standards of justification for religion as compared to science. Religion makes all sorts of claims, which all merit different sorts of justification; very infrequently is it only a matter of phenomenal justification. Science only makes phenomenal claims, so it only uses empirical justification.

ape wrote:"...
Religion is a scientific theory." Richard Dawkins

Dawkins is not a philosopher, and he really does want to smash idols. I think he is incorrect, largely because he paints all religious claims with the one brush--as if they were all fervent creationists and advocates of theocracy.

ape wrote:Other than smashing that idol of the Bias or Prejudice of Hatred!

I personally would like for people not to be biased in their approach to truth, or for people to hate one another, but that is not science. Science is a fundamentally simple approach to empirical inquiry, and has nothing against idols or hatred overall; it just does not involve them by definition.

ape wrote:So you and I are... ultimately accept that both PROVEN RELIGION and PROVEN SCIENCE are what need to be both taught in Religion Class and in Science Class.
QED.

I'm still not sure how proven religion is different from unproven religion, unless you mean logically consistent religion, but I agree that religion and science should both be taught in school (just separately, because they are not the same).

Alun wrote:P1-3) If an organism does not reproduce itself, it will eventually die and its genetic information will not be expressed.
* I think this follows deductively.
C1-3) If a mutation does not help an organism reproduce, there will not be any pressure for that change in genetic information to promulgate.
* This is microevolution by natural selection. We see it all the time in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Hi Alun,

A New Year of Love to you!:)

But antibiotic-resistant bacteria are still bacteria and have not evolved into something else?

Xlnt conclusion in your last post!:)

Alun wrote:....I agree that religion and science should both be taught in school (just separately, because they are not the same).

Alun wrote:P1-4) Reproduction itself is governed by the expression of DNA.
P2-4) Two populations of organisms that do not reproduce using one another's genetic material are of different species.
C1-4) Species can diverge due to the accumulation of gradual mutations.
* This has been explored on a genetic level for past eukaryotic species divergence events [11][12].
* This has been observed in the present tense for bacteria [13].
C2-4) Species can diverge due to reproductive pressure (from C1-3).
* This has been specifically observed in the present tense in many types of organism [14].
* This is the theory of evolution by natural selection.

Inferring using this with respect to the fossil record, we can further say:

C3-4) Evolution in the past can be explained as a consequence of species divergence due to reproductive pressure.

By species divergence, do you mean, for example, that a species of fish changes into a species of bird, or that an ape changes into a man?

Isn't a bird already a fish which swims in an ocean of air as
a fish already a bird which flies in ocean of water? :dea:

Isn't a man already a frog [frogman] and a bird [birdman of Alcatraz] and a lion [the lion of the tribe of Judah] and a cow [cowboy] and a wolf[wolfman] so that it easy for man to change into a wolf or bird or cow or lion or ---ape and vice versa?

Ezekiel 1:
10As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle.

Daniel 4:
33The same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

Daniel 5:
20But when his heart was lifted up, and his mind hardened in pride, he was deposed from his kingly throne, and they took his glory from him:

21And he was driven from the sons of men;
and his heart was made like the beasts,
and his dwelling was with the wild asses:
they fed him with grass like oxen,
and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till he knew that the most high God ruled in the kingdom of men, and that he appointeth over it whomsoever he will.

Do you see how the same evidence can be interpreted in directly opposite ways based on tne mind set?

Example: It might look as if the audi evolved in to the mercedes when they are actually separate models?

It might look as if audi and merc are separate models when audi evolved in to merc?

That is takes Love & Respect of both opposites to see how both can be right even when only one is literally or linearly right?

ape wrote:By species divergence, do you mean, for example, that a species of fish changes into a species of bird, or that an ape changes into a man?

No, a species as I'm defining it here is a population of organisms that reproduces amongst its own members. So two different species would be two populations which do not cross pollinate. This isn't even an absolute distinction; for example, it is possible for a parasitic bacterium to permanently alter a human's DNA, which is a sort of cross pollination. But this doesn't happen often enough to call such a bacterium a member of the same species as humans. Basically a species has a degree of reproductive specificity.

So species divergence, is when two groups within a species population stop sharing genetic information; i.e., both groups become species of their own. The best way to define this for this discussion is when they would not share genetic information very often, even when put in regular contact with one another. E.g. a population of deer won't successfully mate with a population of horses, even if you put them in the same pen for a long time.

It is notable, though, that we consider coyotes, domestic dogs, and wolves different species, but they are all biologically capable of cross breeding (foxes, though, cannot). Thus we are really calling them species because they don't seem to like to mate with one another. Chances are a stray dog won't join a wolf pack, even though a lone wolf might, but will be attacked by one. For this discussion, though, I don't think the details are too important.

Classes (e.g. mammal, fish, or bird) are not so operationally defined. (And actually this is related to what some of those people you quoted earlier were complaining about in biological systematics.) The division between a fish and a bird is a matter of what traits the organism has. Genuses too (which end up distinguishing man from ape), are defined in this way; we just describe the different aspects of the organism, and group similar organisms together. Whether something is a bacteria, fish, or human does not necessarily imply something about order of evolution or reproductive history, only about what traits the organism actually has.

ape wrote:Do you see how the same evidence can be interpreted in directly opposite ways based on tne mind set?

Example: It might look as if the audi evolved in to the mercedes when they are actually separate models?

Yes, we cannot judge the reproductive history of something based on traits alone. Darwin originally got the idea that everything was related using these sorts of observations, but that is not how his idea is tested--and for exactly the reasons you're pointing to.

What is important, as I try to represent in the OP, is that we have actually watched evolution happen, with results that are analogous to what we see in the fossil record, and tested in real time the factors that natural selection predicts would determine evolution.

The point of note here is that we have seen natural selection cause different populations to stop reproducing with one another and we have seen natural selection generate other novel traits. Thus there is no feasible barrier to natural selection driving, ultimately, the creation of totally different looking organisms like we see in the fossil record.